


I will hold your hand, forever.

by Apulia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Coma, Drama & Romance, Hetalia One Shot(s), Illnesses, M/M, One Shot, Prumano - Freeform, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23333566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apulia/pseuds/Apulia
Summary: Lovino finds himself in the hospital, looking after Gilbert who's in a coma. Destroyed by pain, he begins to remember their last moment and their little things before his beloved's life was hanging from a machine.I don’t own Hetalia or any of the characters. I just own the story.Please read the author notes to have more details.
Relationships: Prussia/South Italy (Hetalia)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	I will hold your hand, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Please, read my note at the end! Is really important and I need your opinion.  
> Before starting, keep in mind that this story was originally written by me in Italian. I tried to translate it in English as better as I could, but I’m sure there are plenty of grammar mistakes there. Please, if you see some errors who annoy you, let me know so I can correct them :)  
> Hope you will leave a feedback, enjoy the story!

February 25, 1949.

"Hello, potato bastard. How was your day? Mine was pretty painful, as usual...ah,damn it!"

Lovino held his head in his hands, trying to hold back the tears. His eyes had begun to be filled with tears: they were like a flooding river, which would sooner or later overflow.  
And if before, he tried to keep the tone of his voice quite composed, now he could no longer hold back from screaming in pain and anger.

He was standing there, heartbroken; watching the man who had given meaning to his life, the man who had made his life a fairy tale, connected to machines that guaranteed his breathing and kept him alive.  
His clothes as a glorious knight, fighter, valiant man, had been replaced by a white nightgown with small yellow birds, like his Gilbird. 

Lovino had begun to take care of Gilbird as if he had been his beloved. He understood that even the little yellow bird had begun to miss his owner. lovino somehow saw the animal more and more sad as the days passed: he ate less and less, and stayed up all night on alternate days.  
Gilbert would have said something like "Even my little bird misses the awesome me!" And Lovino would probably have beaten him with a kitchen spoon. But now it was different: Lovino missed Gilbert's eccentric behavior, his confidence and his awesomness.  
He would have given anything to hear one last bullshit coming out of his mouth.

And with today, it was exactly two years since Gilbert was in a coma. His condition was stable, but he was still too weak to wake up.

And he probably never would have.

"I... I really don't understand! I don't understand why I'm not in a coma, damn it! We're both former nations but you ended up with your life hanging from a machine! Gilbert, damn it! You've fought the bloodyest wars, how is it possible you've been forgotten by everyone?"

He punched the bed where Gilbert was lying, but not violently. Just enough to release his anger.  
The pain he felt was immense, his suffering made him feel the same as humans. He felt his head heavy, his heart weak as well as his soul.  
It was as if he had been robbed of a vital organ. Never in all the wars he had fought, in all the deaths he had seen, had he felt such deep and excruciating pain: the pain that not even death would end.  
He began to cry, to cry as if he had never done so. Big sweet tears slipped gracefully over his tanned face, only to fall and get lost on the nightgown Gilbert was wearing.  
He couldn’t stop, he really couldn’t stop; he cried in the silence of the room, with the sounds of ambulances in the background, which fed his saddest memories.

February 25, 1947

"I love you Lovino, I love you more than my life. I never thought I'd love anyone so much that I don't even care about my state of health. I am about to disappear, and I don't care: I have lived my last moments next to you, and I will always cherish them in my awesome heart. Not even death will end what I feel for you. Even when I was defeated, your love made me the one and only winner."

Gilbert kissed his tears, wiping them from his beloved's face.

"Don't cry. I want to see your beautiful face for the last time, without tears," he moved them gently with his white, weak, tapered finger. "I want to see you smile for the last time, please."

"You're an asshole! How am I supposed to smile in a situation like this?" Lovino cried out, while tears came down copiously and his words were almost incomprehensible: it seemed as if the Italian was about to suffocate with his own tears.  
Gilbert saw Lovino trembling, he thought he would collapse at any moment.

"I...you...you don't understand! You don't understand how I can feel right now, you haven't the faintest idea! I... I..." Lovino was exhausted, and his tearful voice was increasingly nasal and wheezy.

"My love. I lived each day as if it were my last, I loved you unconditionally. I remember every moment we spent together, from when we hated each other to when we started to love each other, and then I finally was brave and awesome enough to ask you to marry me. I didn't even give you anything, a completely un-awesome gesture on my part, right?"

Lovino was surprised. Why was Gilbert wasting the last moments of his life, his last strength, to talk about memories that now was not the time to bring back to light? It wasn't the behaviour he expected of him, the awesome Prussia.  
But Lovino didn't mind. He loved to remember his moments with Gilbert, even though he would never admit it.  
And not even the smallest detail would disappear from his mind.  
Gilbert closed his eyes slowly, then snapped them open again and looked at Lovino's horrified face.

"You bastard, are you trying to give me a heart attack? Don't play games with me now!"

"Haha! Look at you Lovi! You're all red!" His voice was hoarse, tired and wheezy. He couldn't take it anymore.

"I didn't have the money to buy you a gift that was as awesome as you, but you were happy anyway. You see, that smile I saw that day was the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. And I just gave you a simple card with writing on it."

"My love, would you be my beautiful husband?" They said together, at the same time.  
A tear of emotion fell on Gilbert's face, while Lovino covered his face with his hands, trying to hold back the tears.

"I've decided to bring you my gift, even if it's late. I worked every night, and came back at 5 in the morning just to keep sleeping next to you, and hug you to feel your warmth."

Lovino gouged out his eyes. He wanted to shout the worst insults at him, telling him that he was an idiot and how all this was unnecessary, how he spent all his money on a gift Lovino didn't deserve; but he decided to hold back, and not to speak. He wanted to hear Gilbert talk, laugh and cry, because it would be the last time he would hear his voice, his voice characterized by that strong and marked German accent he had learned to love.

"Here, Lovino. This is for you." His trembling hand took an elegant and simple gold ring from his pocket.

"May I have the awesome honor of putting it on for you?" Gilbert said weakly, gently taking his beloved's hand and gently touching his finger as he put the ring on him.

Lovino looked at him. He saw that the ring had been engraved with phrases.

"To Lovino, my awesome husband." They both said again. 

Lovino's eyes were filled again with tears, which clouded his sight. His lip began to tremble, and a bright but extremely sad smile was painted on his face, surrounded by tears that tasted of mixed emotions: sadness, emotion, pain.  
Gilbert silently stared at Lovino's face, which seemed to him a wonderful painting, the most beautiful he had ever seen.  
The German smiled, touched.  
Gilbert at that moment let out from the crimson eyes, the only tear that had ever cried until that moment. Lovino didn’t think twice, and wiped lightly the tear with his finger embellished with the ring, to then pass the finger with the ring on his own lips.  
"Now stop crying, it's not nice to see your awesome husband crying like a sick fountain."

"You smiled earlier. I wonder how I will resist in the afterlife without seeing your face again, in all its emotions. You have an expressive, perfect face. You are a perfect painting, a painting made by the most skillful and awesome of artists." Gilbert resumed the word, and began to be moved as he whispered words of love to Lovino, who had replaced his tears with sobs.

The German took Lovino's hand, holding it weakly. He was short of his energy, knowing that his time had come.

Lovino looked Gilbert in the eyes, taking his bruised and slightly bloodstained face in his hands, placing a sweet kiss on his trembling pale lips.  
It was a soft kiss, but at the same time full of passion and love; Lovino approached Gilbert's head close to his chest, holding him in a warm embrace that he hoped would give Gilbert a little torpor.

He hold his hand weakly, with all the last strength that remained in his body.

"Lovino. I will hold your hand forever." 

And at these words, Gilbert died on Lovino’s chest, in a cold and snowy morning at the end of February.

They were both sitting in the snow, and the more Lovino looked at him, the more he noticed how the place had taken on Gilbert's likenesses: snow as white as his skin, and blood as red as his eyes.

His last tear fell on the snow, only to freeze. And so it was that, taking the German in his arms, he walked away followed by footprints in the white snow.

***

"He is not dead." Ludwig's sad and cold voice surprised Lovino, who moved his head in his direction.

"What? Are you serious? You bastard, don't play games!" Said the Italian, but he was too sad to yell or threaten Gilbert's brother, just because he found it disrespectful in that moment, and also he didn't need to get angry right now; he would have had a lifetime to do it.

"Yeah, a whole lifetime," he thought, still holding his hand.

"Could I ever joke about my brother? He's not dead. His heart is still beating, but he has fallen into a deep coma," Ludwig said in an assertive voice."Try placing your hand on his heart, you'll hear it beating."

Ludwig didn’t have it repeated twice, that Lovino quickly moved his hand close to Gilbert's heart, only to hear it beat.

"Fuck, you're alive, you bastard! you're alive!" He stood up, screaming and pressing his hands against the albino's cheeks.

He refrained from crying again, and laid his hand on Gilbert’s heart again.

he heard it beating too many times; Lovino used to place his ear close to his chest when they were asleep, to make sure his heart was still beating.  
And after a long time, it had seemed so normal to him that he had stopped doing it, hugging the German's torso tightly and hiding his head under his neck, and he would usually leave a small, shy kiss.

"We need to get him to a hospital. Only there they can keep him alive." Lovino nodded to Ludwig's words, and while the younger German called the ambulance, Lovino spent a few more moments with his ear resting on Gilbert's chest, listening to the melody of his beats.

February 25, 1949 

"And now we are here," he hinted a sad smile. "I am grateful to have you here with me. When we got married I made you a promise: we'll be together in wealth and poverty. In sickness and in health."

The Italian reached Gilbert's hand, squeezing it and jamming their fingers together.

"You remember I'd changed the promise: I'd taken out the classic shitty part "till death separates us" because you know, not even death can tear us apart.”

"Gilbert I... I wanted to tell you that you taught me how to love, you taught me the meaning of love, which I never thought would happen to me one day! And I know I should have told you before, and not now that you can't talk to me! But I was too proud, damn me!" He continued to speak, in a frail and clear voice.

He squeezed his hand harder, and a tear slipped down his cheek as soon his eyes gurgled in amazement when he saw that he was not the only one crying: a small pure tear, like their love, fell slowly on Gilbert's face.  
Lovino smiled touched, crying tears of joy mixed with sadness , hoping that one day he might look into the crimson eyes again.  
Sitting in his wicker chair Lovino placed his face on Gilbert's chest using it as a pillow.

"I love you, I fucking love you!" And in response, he received a faint handshake from the lured man.

"So, Gilbert can hear him, because he is in a coma of minimal consciousness?"

Ludwig nodded, looking at the little Italian man by his side.

"Ja Feli. This means he may recover."

"I know it's bad to say but... how come he's not dead?" Feliciano asked naively.

Ludwig looked at him, and Feliciano swore he could see sweetness in his gaze. Ludwig's eyes shone, and he hinted small smile.

"This is because about a dozen people still remember him, and one of them loves him madly. It's enough to keep him alive, but I'm afraid it’s not enough to allow him to go back to the way he was."

"Does Lovi know about this?"

"I don't know. I think that during these years, he was too worried about taking care of him rather than thinking about the reason of his coma and not actual death. I think it's better this way, actually." Feliciano smiled at Ludwig, making him blush.

The two of them, moved, watched without being noticed, Lovino holding Gilbert's hand tightly, despite his deepest sleep.

"To Lovino, my awesome husband."

"I will hold your hand forever."

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am again! I need your opinion. I really like this plot, and I’m think about making this one-shot in a story whit more chapters.  
> I feel Prumano is a really underrated paring, so I really would like to write more and better stories about it (since is my otp). Also, I want to keep happy some fellow prumano shipper out there (like me lol).  
> Let me know! I‘M also writing a lot of other prumanos, so they won’t stop here. Hope you enjoyed!


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